Law Collection Development Policy

Collection Area

Law

General Purpose

Although Dartmouth College does not offer a law degree, a considerable
amount of legal material is needed to support courses in the Dartmouth
curriculum which include an important emphasis on the legal aspects of
the subjects studied. Legal material is also needed for persons doing
graduate work in business, engineering and medicine, as well as for
faculty research. The collection is also used extensively by outside
users, notably lawyers from surrounding communities. A substantial part
of the collection consists of U.S. government documents, Canadian
documents, and New Hampshire documents that are received through the
respective depository programs. [See the policy statements for these
collections] and legal journals. The greatest part of the acquisition of
legal material is for the collection in Baker Library but Feldberg
Library of Business and Engineering and Dana Biomedical Library collect
in their respective subject fields.

Online electronic access to full-text legal materials, specifically
campus-wide access to LEXIS-NEXIS, has sharply increased the
availability of materials to the Dartmouth community. State court
decisions, state codes, and most law review articles were either
unavailable or hard to acquire. Now, they are available on every
desktop with Internet access. This campus-wide access allowed the
library in 1997 to end subscriptions to several print titles saving
valuable shelving space. The library also used the opportunity to end
subscriptions to several titles that were more appropriate for
practicing attorneys and/or law libraries.

Dartmouth College Programs

As noted above, the Dartmouth curriculum contains many courses which
emphasize legal aspects of a given subject. For example, law as it
impinges on politics and government administration, environmental
control and the legal rights of minorities and women are all subjects of
considerable interest to members of the Dartmouth faculty and are
studied in the courses which they teach. Medical jurisprudence, medical
ethics and public health regulation, are the concern of Dana Biomedical
Library and material on these subjects is collected there. The Feldberg
Library, which supports the Tuck School of Business Administration
graduate program, has a general collection in business and commercial
law, as well as a more in-depth collection of U.S. tax, securities and
accounting law. For the most part, legal material falls in the K
classification but frequently works are classified in the subjects with
which the law under discussion deals.

General Subject Boundaries

The Dartmouth legal collection is strongest in the areas of Federal and
New England legislative documents, statutes, administrative regulations,
law reports and legal bibliography. Works pertaining to states outside
the New England area, and to some extent New York, are not collected in
any depth, nor are those pertaining to smaller administrative
jurisdictions. Works collected are in the area of history, philosophy,
and general applicability of laws with a very general coverage being
sought for areas of the world outside North America and Western Europe.
Human rights and environmental issues, regardless of country, are of
interest to students of political science so works written in English on
these subjects are well represented.

The collection is strong in the area of general reference and other aids
to legal research. Examples include Black's Law Dictionary, The
Environment Reporter, West's Encyclopedia of American Law, and the U.S.
Code Annotated.

Languages

English is the primary language of the collection.

Geographic Areas

Primary and secondary works in western European languages are purchased
selectively.

Types Of Material Collected

Publications in law may be in the form of books, periodicals, reports,
loose-leaf supplements, or government documents.

Format Of Materials Collected

In addition to paper, legal materials are acquired in microform and
electronic (CD-ROM and online) formats.

Special Collections and Manuscripts

The Library has retained an extensive collection of the papers of some
prominent lawyers and professors of international law. Among these are
the papers of Daniel Webster [1782-1852] which include his role in the
Dartmouth College Case; Robert Vose [1763-1841], Chief Justice of the
Court of Sessions for Cheshire County, New Hampshire; Grenville Clark
[1882-1967], lawyer, public servant, civil rights and peace activist;
and professors of international law James Colby [1850-1939], Clyde
Eagleton [1891-1958], and Waldo Chamberlin [1905-1986].

Other Resources Available

Requests for legal materials, not available in the Library's collection,
are directed to the Vermont Law School or to other law schools in the
vicinity. DCIS (Dartmouth College Information System) databases,
including LEXIS-NEXIS, provide access to full-text legal materials.